Bleacher Report is a joke (it's just a content-farm to generate hit$), but yeah, I really like Royce White.

Now, let's not go crazy here. White doesn't have Sir Charles' baffling athleticism. And even being a "poor man's" Charles Barkley would make him an All-Star.

I'd compare Royce to a another notable "Charles": Charles "Chuck" Hayes. Chuck Hayes with passing skills. Royce can be that undersized blue-collar post-player who does the little things to help his team win. He can also be an on-court enforcer and an off-court leader (along with Lin of course).

Chuck Hayes was very undersized, under handles/offense, yet very underrated.

Take Royce white at 6 ft 9, 260, sick handles and passing, but no problems going down low to bang. He knows how to board, and doesn't rely on vertical. I easily see him as a poor mans Barkley. Might not have quite the ups. But still has plenty of power and explosiveness. Plus his extra size helps make up for it. Barkley was really only 6 ft 4. Again I could easily see him as a poor mans Barkley, all star, if things go right for him.

Bleacher report can be a joke and content farm, but espn is much the same. Don't drink the kool aid guy. Espn hides it under a classier more professional veil.... But yeah. I will read whatever and filter out the bs as best I can. Something we all probably should do.

However, I am concerned about his lack of lateral foot speed. I don't think losing weight would help that either, as he simply isn't explosive. Defensively, I am worried about him being attacked in screen situations.

I don't understand the Charles Barkley comparisons that the commentators in summer league were making. Barkley was a guard quick super coordinated leader and pounder who was too fast for big men to catch and too bulky for smaller players to stop in the post. Barkley was one of the most athletic guys ever to play power forward in the NBA, and Royce White doesn't have anything close to Barkley's athleticism.

If I had to compare Royce White to someone physically, it would be Juwan Howard. Mind you I am talking about Howard NOW, not the Howard of 20 years ago!

Barkley was one of the best rebounders in NBA history because he could bounce guys out of position and was incredibly quick to the ball all the way to his retirement game.

What Barkley wasn't was much of a ball handler. Actually, Royce White clearly is a better ball handler than Barkley especially on the break. Still, Barkley in his Philly days would take opposing big men outside and burn them off the dribble.

Barkley was definitely not a willing passer and was actually a ball stopper that made Carmelo Anthony look like Larry Bird. But nobody complained about it because Barkley would typically convert while wearing his man down physically.

One area where Barkley got a bad rap was defense. He occasionally had trouble keeping taller players off the offensive glass, but Barkley knew where to be and fought his hardest to overcome his lack of height. I think Barkley himself was more critical of himself defensively than he should've been.

Barkley had the most trouble playing against the Boston Celtics because of Larry Bird and Lin's coach Kevin McHale who is one of the greatest power forwards of all time. Bird would score over Barkley any time he wanted, and McHale was even more unstoppable against Barkley than Bird was. I actually felt sorry for Barkley after seeing those two roast him in regular season games, but then nobody ever stopped those two Hall of Famers!

Waiting for the day when Lin's shooting gets to Nash level, 50-40-90. ;-)

One thing I hope Lin pay more attention is that he shot way too many long 2s last season with the Knicks. I remember a game when he hit 3-4 consecutive shots with his feet on the 3 point line. He needs to cut that down. Need to either step a bit out for a 3 or step closer for a closer shot! Long 2s are the least effective shots in the game.

Thanks, dude. Wow, the article quoted Coach Scheppler as saying, "his 'bad shooting day' now is better than his 'bad shooting day' scores from last year." But in the video he actually says, "his bad shooting day now is better than his BEST shooting day last year." (emphasis added)

It's hard to predict how someone will be shooting in real game situations, as opposed to shooting in practice when the pressure's off. Is Lin practicing scrimmages with other players ? I would like to see some scrimmage videos, even practice games would show how far he has progressed.

David Lee is listed at 6"9 and Jlin is listed at 6"3. Is it just me or does Jlin look a tad bit shorter than Lee in this picture (1-2 inches)? It's probably partially the camera angle, but still..http://ww3.sinaimg.cn/bmiddle/6d3f585cjw1dwbkgf6kxyj.jpg . I've also seen pictures of Carmelo (6"8) standing next to Jlin and he doesn't look that much taller. I know I'm kind of obsessing over height, but I think it's relevant to know in predicting Jlin's future success...lots of these guy exaggerate their heights. It looks like for whatever reason Jlin under-exaggerated his height at 6"3.

When Isiah Thomas smartly drafted David Lee with a low first round draft pick, David Lee was listed at 6'7".

Generally I subtract two inches off any player's height. That makes David Lee actually about 6'5" barefoot. Similarly, Michael Jordan was listed at 6'4" in the Barcelona Olympics and Magic Johnson was 6'6" (Magic's coach Pat Riley said Magic was 6'7", though he didn't say if that was with shoes on).

Jeremy Lin is the rare guy who is actually as tall and is heavier than he says he is. By modern NBA standards, Lin is easily large enough to play shooting guard and even occasional small forward.

Lin is roughly about the same height as Charles Barkley who listed himself at 6'6" but later admitted he was 6'3.5". It's like Yao Ming who says he is 7'3" and openly acknowledges that he was listed at 7'6" for publicity purposes. A picture of Yao standing next to Shawn Bradley listed at 7'6" shows Bradley being taller than Yao.

Wow...I'm really shocked at what you are saying about the reality of the NBA player's height. I never could have imagined that Jordan was only 6'4"...that's just insane. I always imagined these guys having these other worldly physical attributes...but Jordan is only 4" taller than me. Unbelievable.

Jlin really does have the perfect point guard physical attributes at his height and weight.

I think the most important thing right now is his 3 pt FG%. That will spread the floor and open up the driving lanes when defense needs to guard him all the way to the arc.Right now, Jeremy Lin driving to his left, is still faster than Steve Nash driving to his right. It's just that Nash has the ability to stop at any time and hit a jumpshot. That's what makes Nash so hard to guard, not his speed.Being able to hit jumpshots consistently when given space, will make a huge difference, cut down on turnovers, and create more assists for teammates.

I agree with this. For the sake of his longevity in the game, he needs to cut down on those drives and be more of an accurate long range bomber. Players who can shoot have longer careers in the NBA than players who rely on athleticism to get in the paint.

When Kidd came into the league, his Mavs teammates called him "Ason" because they said he had no J!

After a string of bad knee injuries, Kidd really committed himself to improving his jump shot. He hired a shooting coach and worked on his game in the offseason. The result is that he finally ended up winning the championship he had worked so hard for.

Lin is getting good shooting coaching early. That's good for Lin long term.

At this point in his career, "cutting down on those drives" wouldn't be sound advice to give to Jeremy. That is a huge part of his game. He's a playmaker and creator, and to do that effectively, you have to penetrate the defense; that's what good PG's do. If he stopped getting into the lane his efficiency would plummet. Basically, he'd be a worse-shooting version of Mike Bibby.

Kidd has shot about 36% the last 2 seasons, even with this "improved" jumpshot of his. He hardly ever tries to drive (understandably, because he can't do it anymore) and that has had a big role in his decline. The fact is, Lin is not a great shooter yet. And even if he was or if he becomes one, falling in love with your jumpshot is the last thing you want to do.

For a long time Jason kids shooting was underrated and unfairly maligned.... No doubt he got better at it, but His shooting before now was brought down by him having to shoot a lot of bailouts and buzzer beaters

Hi: I have been following this website for a while now, and find it highly informative and entertaining! This is my first post. There was a short clip from the web yesterday where Jeremy is working out in a gym after basketball camp. He seemed to grimace in pain quite a bit while doing some floor exercises. Has anyone else notice? This, together with the photos of ice bags, knee braces, and sleeve, is making me worry. I work in health care and do know expressions of pain as opposed to hard work-outs. I am a huge fan and am curious if anyone has more information.

The goal of a workout is to push yourself to the limit BEYOND what you would normally do in a typical game. So that during a real game, his body will be prepared for the physicality and exhaustion.It's better than he gets burned out in practice, than during the season when every game counts.

Lin is going to be a good shooter through sheer force of will. I'm still worried about his mechanics, though. Last we saw him, they weren’t optimal. Not having optimal mechanics doesn't mean you can't be a world class shooter, but you'd better have Larry Bird- or Reggie Miller-level cockiness. And even if you do have Larry Bird cockiness, you'd be EVEN BETTER with more efficient mechanics. You'll certainly have fewer shooting slumps, because shooting slumps usually occur due to a loss of confidence and with perfect form, confidence isn't nearly as important. Moreover, Bird and Miller were much taller, so have more mechanical advantage; they have leeway in terms of mechanical efficiency.

Problems with Lin's shot:

1. He catapults the ball too much. Bird was a catapulter. He also had more confidence and shooting talent than perhaps anyone who's ever played. And he was 6'9". Don't model his shot.

2. He flairs his elbow which causes left/right misses. As Larry Bird said in his autobiography, there's no excuse for missing left or right. That's completely under your control. Of course, it's possible to be a great shooter and flair your elbow like Reggie Miller, but he had the second most confidence and shooting talent in NBA history. Don't model his shot.

3. He cocks the ball too far to the side of his head. It should be as close to centered as possible. If there is no triangulation necessary, there's fewer left/right misses. Steve Nash and Ray Allen center their shots.

Lin's shot should model Steve Nash:

Steve Nash is the best all-around shooter in NBA history. I do not believe Nash is one of the cockiest shooters in NBA history and yet he's still the best shooter. This is because his mechanics are flawless. Nash is not very tall, so does not have much mechanical advantage, but he has maintained a high 3 point percentage over his career because his mechanics are extremely efficient. In a bit of serendipity, Lin is the same height as Nash. It is a no brainer that he should try to make his shot look like Nash's as closely as possible.

If you want to call it a bias, I will mention that my mechanics look like Nash's, down to tiny details that most people wouldn't notice, and I was a 90% free throw shooter in high school and college. I didn't have a shooting coach, I just spent hours and hours in the gym each day self-assessing each and every shot, trying to figure out what form would work better. And after 10 years and many incremental insights, I arrived at a form I didn't believe could be polished any further, and that form looks just like Nash's.

1. Nash does not catapult the ball. He sort of pushes the ball. But not a forward push, an upward push. This upward push does three things. First, it ensures that the larger, stronger lats on your back are involved, while simultaneously deemphasizing the weaker triceps and wrist. With most players, there is a conscious emphasis to "snap the wrists". This is even taught by fundamentalists. In reality, the wrist snap should be a totally unconscious natural progression of the push that starts with the lats[1].

Second, not catapulting, but instead pushing, ensures that the proper arc is put on the ball. I read somewhere that Sheppler advises Lin that 45 degrees is the optimal angle to shoot the ball at. This was a little frustrating to me because that is certainly not true. The optimal angle depends on how close to the basket you are, but it usually is above 45 degrees and the angle rises as you get closer[2]. This is indisputable physics. The aperture area of the hoop is smaller the lower the shot angle. If you could drop the ball directly from above the hoop, you'd have the maximum clearance. Higher angles mean more clearance. If you use a higher arc, you don't have to be nearly as accurate to still make shots[3].

Third, no special attention is needed to impart backspin. It's the natural consequence of pushing the ball up, causing the ball to roll back off the finger tips. If you are flinging the ball forward instead, you must make a conscious effort to snap the wrists and impart backspin.

2. Nash does not flair his elbow. It's pointed directly at the hoop. There's no excuse for flairing your elbow. If I were Lin, I wouldn't work on anything else until my shoulder flexibility were such that every single shot had the elbow pointed at the hoop. In my opinion it's an unforgiveable mechanical sin. Those are free baskets being given away. Your elbow is a hinge joint. If it's pointing at the basket, the ball can only go straight.

3. Nash almost cocks the ball to the middle of his head. Ray Allen, the second best shooter in the NBA, does center it. If the ball is centered and your elbow is pointed at the hoop, you'll never be off left/right. The argument against being completely centered is that for many players, the view of the hoop is temporarily obstructed. Ray Allen gets around this because he is able to cock the ball to a few inches above his head, and he can do this because he is tall with long limbs so he can generate enough force with an abbreviated shooting stroke. Anyway, this argument sounds important in theory, but in practice is not relevant. A shot is so quick and the period in which your view is obstructed is so short that your brain doesn't even notice it after a little practice. The benefits of shooting from centered position greatly outweigh this drawback.

Having the minimum cues for an athletic movement is ideal. When I teach someone to shoot, I have two cues, "put" and "push". Put means putting the ball in centered position, elbow pointed at basket. The ball can start anywhere, but when you put, it goes in a straight efficient line to center, cocked position. And push means push the ball up with your lats and correct shot sequencing will take care of itself. Newbies look like they've been shooting for years with these two cues.

Proper cues result in a mechanical (not athletic) movement. Mechanical movements are way better because they can be replicated precisely every time. They're repeatable. These cues also result in a distinct two part movement. Watch Nash's shooting stroke and see how it is a mechanical, two part movement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdslodeCQH4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejTrZOkFXtk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzQruMtrqQw

Anyway, I can walk into a gym after a year's layoff and be shooting swishes in a few minutes, because I've taken the athleticism out of the shot. It's purely mechanical. Anyone with normal vision can almost not fail to make baskets with the right mechanics.

Finally, note that having a mechanical shot does not mean losing your ability to make athletic shots too. Games aren’t choreographed and you will have to take jump shots from odd angles with the ball at weird cocked positions. I know from experience that perfecting your standard shot does not prevent you from being a very good at improvisational scoring. The human brain is an amazing thing. My brother can switch between QWERTY and Colemak keyboard layouts at a moment's notice. ;)

[1] Ray Allen snaps his wrists. This makes sense for him because he's so tall and his arms are so long that he has tremendous leverage in his arms and wrists.

[2] Practicing using higher arcs near the basket is also helpful because in the NBA, guards often need extra high arc to shoot over tall defenders.

[3] Empirically, if I haven't been to the gym in a while and I start shooting, I'll miss long or short off the rim for a few shots (not left or right, remember, because if you're pointing your elbow at the rim, that should never happen). The next thing I'll do is say to myself, "push that ball up in as high an arc as you can, push it UP" and the balls will start dropping through in clean swishes, as if by magic.

Lin's shooting form is far from perfect. He's holding the ball to the right side of his head, his feet and body are not pointed straight at the rim, instead of going up straight there is a slight sideways push in his release. I don't know what Doc Scheppler is teaching him, but either he's not following it precisely, or it's not perfect form to begin with. I've always wondered that since Doc is a high school girl's coach, that his methods might be different than that used by NBA male players, since female players use more legs and less arms in their jumpshot.

Whatever the shooting form ends up looking like, it needs to feel "natural" with every shot, it should not be "following directions" and overthinking about form instead of just putting the ball into the hoop.

Just focus on putting the ball in the hoop, and the body will find a way to do it.

No Mr Screwup, we'll just continue to PUNK YOU like you keep asking us to do to you.

Like I keep saying, get out of here if you don't like it here. You can't take the heat, go somewhere else to hate on people.

Since you brought up the racist thing again, LET'S FIGHT SOME MORE. I don't see anybody other than you crying about race here. What is your big problem with race and why do you keep bringing it up here? Hater Unknown, I am addressing you too. WHY WHY WHY?

John Stockton, Allen Iverson, Michael Jordan, Micheal Ray Richardson, Adrian Dantley, and Julius Erving are but some of the Hall of Famers that had a catapult shot that went IN.

Like Red Auerbach said, "you don't have to be a picture shooter". I trust Auerbach's Hall of Fame advice.

hey michael, do you have any videos of your form? i enjoy watching the form of others, including nash and allen. for me, long sessions of shooting long range jumpers on the court is more enjoyable than actual team games.

screwup/unknown: you called lin a 3rd string guard. that's why this board gives you shit :) you have zero credibility.

MrScrewUp said: "Word of advice though, be careful on this board though to not criticize Lin or his game too much or you will be called a racist. Don't say I didn't warn you. LOL. "

I don't think he is branding the members of this board as racists. What he's saying is that he feels uncomfortable giving his honest criticisms of JLin's game because some people brand him as a racist. I also feel the same, so I don't even say anything that sounds like criticisms of JLin's game. And I am an Asian-American (or an American of Asian ethnicity or whatever), so I do understand where MrScrewUp is coming from.

One comment I have on shooting is that it does seem like there is a limit on how much you can improve on your shooting. Take Federer's serve for example. The guy has such a natural serve that even if someone tries to practice 10 hours a day and try to copy it, the other person will almost never be able to have that kind of serve. What I am saying is that if the shooting was simple, Shack would not have a lousy FT percentage. What makes me hopeful that JLin's shooting could improve is the fact that his FT is pretty good especially in pressure situations, which means he might be able to significantly improve his field goal percentage. No matter how well you shoot during practice, I know having played competitive sports, that it's hard to emulate that during real game.

Quote from Charles Munger (Warren Buffett's partner) on human psychology and how people are wired to not be open-minded:

"If people tell you what you really don't want to hear what's unpleasant there's an almost automatic reaction of antipathy. You have to train yourself out of it. It isn't foredestined that you have to be this way. But you will tend to be this way if you don't think about it.

Television was dominated by one network ‑ CBS in its early days. And Paley was a god. But he didn't like to hear what he didn't like to hear. And people soon learned that. So they told Paley only what he liked to hear. Therefore, he was soon living in a little cocoon of unreality and everything else was corrupt..."

I reckon a lot of people here also do not want to hear that Jlin is not as good a player (YET) as Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, Westbrook, Rondo, etc. which is why people like me who say that are branded as racists. LOL.

Dont mistake what people prefer with what people want to hear. Dont mistake what people want to hear with what you want people to think.

People come here because they support and like JLin. So - they want to talk about him in a respectful way. Talking about his play or techniques is no problem as long as its factual.

Coming to a JLin fan site and bashing JLin like you have done in the past makes you either a lunatic, hypocrite or a racist or all of it. Its so simpel as that.

After all - noone has brought up racism until you have and yet you see yourself as a victim - after all you have written in the past - what proofs my point... youre are lunatic, racist, oportunist stalker who likes to bash JLin and JLin fans. Doing so turn you on and makes you happy. Maybe JLin fans should collect some money, show their love for the mentally disturbed and send Mr Screwup to rehab.

If you indeed are Asian, MrScrewup, then I have a BIG PROBLEM with you.

You're one of those self hating Asians who thinks he's above other Asians. Guys like you buy into the racist American media and mistakenly think that you're above other Asians just because you kiss the butts of mainstream society.

Your yucky self hating behavior sets a bad example for Asians. You come on here and flame Asians because you think your nonAsian friends will like you more. Meanwhile you are actively feeding the negative stereotypes that Asians are inferior and are racist to each other.

I have called you many things, and I'll call you a great many more before I'm through with you.

And you know what? A great many of the criticism against Lin ARE racially motivated. When you said that Lin had to "play like a superstar" despite earning just over the league average for his contract, you held Lin to the hateful double standard that Asians have to perform way better than other men of any other color just to earn the same Amy of money.

SHAME ON YOUR RACIST SELF HATING ASS!!! And don't even get me started on Hater Unknown who LIES about being Asian here.

My major problem with Lin's mechanics is that he seems to hold the ball too close to his palm in his shooting position. In the first video Michael Terry provided of Nash, Steve explains it perfectly when he says it's hard to control the ball when you're holding it too close to your palms and can't fit two fingers in. IMO, this probably explains why there can be a lot of variation in his shooting and he tends to be streaky.

Obviously, his form (to the right of his head) is something he developed when he was much smaller and weaker and he never adjusted it when he grew. It's probably a bit late to completely overhaul that, so that's probably something that will stay as long as he shoot a decent percentage.